Timeline
The following is a timeline of events occurring in Berserk. Events in this timeline are formatted according to their relative position to "Before the Birth of Guts" (BG), "Before the Eclipse" (BE), and the "Age of Darkness" (AD). Prehistory Circa 40,000 BG * The Idea of Evil is birthed from the subconsciousness of early mankind. The Age of Man (Before the Birth of Guts) Circa 1000 BG * A warlord named Gaiseric unifies the western continent, with Midland as the center of his empire. However, the ancient city that Gaiseric made his capital is subsequently destroyed. Though the cause of that destruction is unknown, with a fairy tale speculating that God sent four or five angels to punish Gaiseric and the city disappeared due to lightning and great earthquakes. According to Holy See lore, Gaiseric's fall was related to a sage who he had imprisoned in the Tower of Conviction that made an angel come forth as he proclaimed the king's sins to God in the midst of every possible torture. * First Eclipse marks the creation of first God Hand member (apparently, Void). * The mysterious warrior known only as the Skull Knight appears in the aftermath of Gaiseric's downfall and wages war against "the inhumans". * The Skull Knight meets the witch Flora, from whom he acquires the Berserker Armor. * Members of Gaiseric's bloodline apparently survived the destruction of his kingdom and are said to have become the ancestors of the current royal family of Midland. Circa 800 BG * The second member of the God Hand is born. Circa 700 BG * The mighty warrior known as Nosferatu Zodd relinquishes his humanity to become an apostle. At this time, he becomes rival to the Skull Knight. * Skull Knight, now reduced to a spectre, relinquishes the Berserker Armor back to Flora. * The Holy See is officially established, repurposing all sanctuaries devoted to the elemental spirits into churches and demonizing those who refuse to be converted, such as witches. * At that time, the Holy See also builds the city of Albion around the Tower of Conviction. In time, the area amasses large amounts of restless spirits due to the atrocities committed inside and outside of the tower. Circa 600 BG * The third member of the God Hand is born. Circa 400 BG * The fourth member of the God Hand is born. The Age of War (Before the Eclipse) Circa 80 BG * Chuder conquers the fortress of Doldrey, sparking the One Hundred-Year War with Midland. * The Kushan tribe of assassins known as the Bakiraka are exiled for political reasons. Circa 70 BG * The legendary blacksmith Godot is born. Circa 30 BG * Magic has been reduced to mere superstition. * Flora meets a young Morgan. * Godot is commissioned to forge a sword fit to slay a dragon. * The King exiles Godot to the mountains, where he sets up a forge near a mine rich with elven minerals. Circa 15 BG * The Vandimion Bank, owned by the wealthy Federico de Vandimion III, provides money to Chuder. This fails to resolve the situation between them and Midland. Circa 19 BE * Griffith is born. * Guts is born from the corpse of a hanged woman. He is quickly found by a mercenary group led by Gambino. * Casca is born. 18 BE * Charlotte is born with her parents celebrating her birth. Nine years later, Charlotte's mother dies and the King of Midland marries another woman, who has a secret affair with the king's brother Julius. 16 BE * Gambino reluctantly trains Guts to use a sword after Shisu's death. 10 BE * Guts is raped by fellow mercenary Donovan. Guts later kills Donovan during a mission in revenge. * Gambino loses his leg during a battle, becoming crippled, bitter and weakening his group. 08 BE * Guts confronts his foster-father, Gambino, over the latter's machinations, and is later forced to kill him in self-defense. * Guts is exiled from Gambino's group; he goes from battle to battle serving different mercenary armies. 07 BE * The three sons of Federico III: Georgio, Politiano and Magnifico struggle for the succession to their father, while Farnese, his daughter, neglected and restless, is calmed down only by Serpico, her servant and secret half-brother. * Fueled by his desire to find glory, Griffith establishes the Band of the Falcon. 05 BE * As a prisoner of war, Guts has his first encounter with the supernatural while meeting a flower spirit named Chitch, who he initially suspects to be a hallucination. * Recruited by Lord Gennon, a perverted squire of Chuder, the Band of the Falcon begins to gain fame. * Devastated by the death of some of his soldiers, Griffith spends a night with Lord Gennon, sleeping with him for money that he would use to turn his band into a more effective militant group and thus, prevent deaths from occurring. * The King of Midland places the Bakiraka in his services alongside many militant factions: the White Dragon, the White Tiger, Arklow and Tumel. * The Count becomes an apostle by sacrificing his wife, pretending her death to be the work of the heretics as he orders unjustified executions of anyone accused of heresy. * Vargas, a royal doctor, learns of the Count's transition and is forced to watch his family die before he escapes with the Count's Beherit, but not without being horrifically disfigured. 04 BE * Guts defeats the infamous warrior Bazuso and attracts Griffith's attention. * Guts maims and injures some members of the Band of the Falcon in a lone field. Griffith defeats Guts twice, then forces him to join the Falcons. * In a village destroyed by flames, Godot saves a girl named Erica and adopts her as his daughter. * The King of Midland founds the Black Dog Knights led by Wyald, a prisoner and apostle of the God Hand. 02 BE * Rosine, tired of living with her family and obsessed with the tale of Peekaf, decides to leave her house and heads to the Misty Valley, where she becomes an apostle in exchange for her parents' lives. * The Black Dog Knights are exiled for their crimes. 01 BE * The Band of the Falcon's mercenaries defeat the Black Sheep Iron Spears Heavy Knights of Chuder and are recruited by Midland for the One Hundred-Year War. * The patriarch of Vandimion sends his daughter, Farnese de Vandimion, to a convent. Farnese becomes the commander of the Holy Iron Chain Knights. Serpico burns his insane mother at the stake as a heretic, pressured by Farnese and worried that he too may be killed. * Guts confronts Nosferatu Zodd for the first time during a siege, whose presence cements the existence of the supernatural to Guts. * Minister Foss succeeds in setting Julius against Griffith, but a failed assassination attempt results in the death of the noble with his son and heir to the throne, Adonis, both killed by Guts. * Griffith discusses with Charlotte his criteria for a true friend. Guts accidentally overhears this conversation, leaving him deeply unsettled by the revelation. * The King of Midland carries out a final attack on Chuder, which has been weakened by internal problems. During the battle against the Blue Whale Knights, Guts and Casca manage to forge a deeper bond. * Guts is pitted against one-hundred of Adon Coborlwitz's soldiers and prevails, making him a legend on the battlefields as he is eventually dubbed The Hundred Man Slayer. * The King orders the Band of the Falcon to recapture Doldrey. They defeat the Purple Rhino Knights of Lord Boscogn and Governor Gennon, and conquer the fort using stratagem. Midland wins the One Hundred-Year War. * Flora takes on Schierke as an apprentice, accompanied by Ivalera the elf. * Griffith foils another conspiracy against him, led by Foss and the Queen of Midland, who is eventually killed as a result. * Guts announces his departure from the Band of the Falcon, seeking to follow his own dream. * Griffith, failing to stop Guts, falls into a downward spiral and is caught having intimate affairs with Charlotte, leading to his arrest. * Griffith is incarcerated and tortured in the Tower of Rebirth as the King denounces the Band of Falcons as criminals. * Guts meets the Skull Knight, who foretells the Band of the Falcon's demise during the Eclipse. 00 BE * Guts spends an entire year living with Godot and Erica. He confronts and defeats a Kushan man named Silat in a tournament, from whom he learns that the Falcons are now a gang of robbers in hiding. * Guts reunites with the Falcons and temporarily rejoins them to rescue Griffith and restore their forces. * Guts and Casca admit their love for each other and unknowingly conceive their child. * Casca, Judeau, Pippin and Guts rescue Griffith from the Tower of Rebirth. However, Griffith's physical anatomy and mental stability has become severely compromised due to prolonged torture. * The ill-stricken King hires Wyald and the Black Dog Knights to wipe out the Falcons. * Nearly half of the Band of the Falcon are slaughtered by Rosine and the Count. Only Rickert survives the ordeal when the Skull Knight intervenes. * The Black Dog Knights are defeated by the Falcons as Wyald is killed by Nosferatu Zodd. * Rickert is found by a company of circus performers and meets an elf called Puck. * After losing his last thread of sanity, Griffith attempts commit suicide in a lake, only to rediscover his Crimson Beherit. As his comrades arrive to help him, Griffith unknowingly triggers the Eclipse. * The Band of the Falcon, along with Guts and Casca, are transported to the Interstice where they are introduced to Void, Slan, Conrad and Ubik. * Void and Ubik manipulate Griffith into accepting the God Hand's proposition. Every member of the Band of the Falcon is branded by Void for sacrifice. Only Guts and Casca survive. * Griffith is reborn as the final member of the God Hand, Femto. * Guts loses his right eye and left arm trying to defend Casca. To cement his revenge against Guts, Femto brutally rapes Casca, causing her to lose her sanity. * Skull Knight enters the Interstice and rescues both Guts and Casca from the God Hand, returning them to the mortal realm. * Farnese de Vandimion and the Holy Iron Chain Knights discover a red lake. Finding the remains of the Falcons, they conclude it to be the birth site of the "Falcon of Darkness". * Guts awakens four days later in Godot's mine, attended to by Rickert and Erica, and learns of Casca's condition. Guts runs away from in intense grief and vows revenge on Griffith. * Casca gives birth to a deformed infant: Guts' prematurely born child tainted by Femto's demonic essence. * Guts leaves Casca to Erica and Rickert to start his hunt for the apostles. As a farewell gift, Rickert gives Guts a fake left arm with a built-in cannon and a repeater crossbow. * Guts finds the Dragon Slayer inside Godot's armory and uses it to kill an attacking apostle. Godot allows Guts to take the sword with him on his journey. The Age of Darkness (After the Eclipse) 02 AD * Over the course of two years, Guts mercilessly hunts and slaughters apostles, becoming renowned as the "Black Swordsman". * Rickert constructs a memorial to his fallen brethren, the Hill of Swords. * Guts kills the Snake Baron at the village of Koka and saves Puck, who becomes his first traveling companion. * Guts arrives in the city of the Count, and takes a Beherit from Vargas. * Guts battles Commander Zondark and enters the apostle’s castle, where he mortally wounds the Count in front of his young daughter Theresia. * The Count activates his Beherit and Guts finally comes face-to-face with the God Hand again, only to be unable to kill Griffith, who has mastered his demonic powers. * The Count is dragged into the Abyss after hesitating to sacrifice his only daughter. Theresia swears revenge to Guts, who leaves, emotionally affected. * Isidro runs away from home, dreaming of following the Band of the Falcon and its raider captain. In the 2016 anime only, he encounters Guts in Koka by chance. An impressed Isidro then attempts to follow after the swordsman when he leaves the village, only to lose him during a heavy rain storm.Berserk 2016 anime; Episode 1 (2016 Anime) 03 AD * Guts saves Jill from a gang of bandits and a spectral tree, and soon learns that the nearby villages are being assaulted by the apostle Rosine and the "elves" that she sired from children. * Guts is branded a mass murderer after the Holy Iron Chain Knights witness him killing Rosine and her elves, whom they mistake to be human children. * The manifestation of Guts' inner darkness finally takes form as a result of his incessant killing and sleepless nights. * The Holy Iron Chain Knights capture and imprison Guts at their camp. With Puck's help, Guts escapes and takes Farnese hostage. * Farnese has her faith shaken after witnessing Apostles for the first time. The next day, Serpico rescues Farnese and has a brief scuffle with Guts. * In the outskirts of Albion, a person on the fringes of society invokes the God Hand and becomes the Egg-Shaped Apostle by offering the world as his sacrifice. Soon after, everyone in Midland has a prophetic dream of the coming of plague, invaders, and their savior: The Falcon of Light. * Nosferatu Zodd receives a visit from the Falcon of Light where he is easily defeated in battle. Pledging his eternal service to the Falcon, Zodd is commanded to travel to Albion. * The King of Midland dies, leading to Wyndham being taken over by the Kushan army. * Casca runs off from Erica and ends up in the company of a harlot named Luca, who is among the refugees and keeps her from being violated by her clients. * The Holy See places Farnese in the service of their fanatical chief inquisitor, Mozgus, to oversee the chaos that has risen in Albion due to the Cult of the Goddess of Flame committing murders of the Holy See's priesthood. * Guts has a vision of Casca being burned. The Demon Child appears to beseech him to go the location where its mother will die. * Guts returns to Godot's house. Learning the blacksmith's health is failing as his arsenal is refined, he realizes that he once again abandoned Casca like he did years ago. The following day, Guts begins his journey to Albion. * Guts reunites with Isidro before leaving the youth to spare him from attacks by the restless spirits of Mozgus' executed victims. * Guts then reunites with the Skull Knight, learning that Griffith is to regain corporeal form and that he must make a choice: to stop him, or to save Casca. * Casca follows one of Luca's harlots, Nina, who is abducted by heretics who believe her to be a witch. Casca's presence stirs the restless spirits within the cave just as the Holy Iron Chain Knights enter. * Guts kills the cultist leader before facing Serpico in a duel, which he narrowly wins. Despite Guts' valiant efforts, Casca and Nina are both captured and taken to the Tower of Conviction * Casca's presence at the Tower signals the beginning of the Incarnation Ceremony, summoning the tormented spirits of the tortured to attack and kill the Tower's inhabitants. Casca herself is protected by the Demon Child. * Godot dies in his sleep, leading to Rickert becoming his successor. * Guts puts together a rescue party consisting of Isidro, Luca, and Jerome. They storm the Tower and form an alliance with Farnese and Serpico to save Casca and Nina. * Mozgus and his disciples are reborn as Apostle Spawn. With newfound power, Mozgus takes Casca captive. * Guts kills Mozgus and rescues Casca while the Tower of Conviction collapses, killing everyone inside. * The Egg of the Perfect World, having swallowed the dying Demon Child, completes the Incarnation Ceremony and ceases to be as a resurrected Griffith emerges from the lifeless shell. * Silat arrives at Albion with orders to capture Guts; however, Griffith escapes on Zodd while Guts flees with Casca. * Farnese abandons her faith and duty, deciding to follow Guts while accompanied by Serpico. Azan, for his part, returns to the port city of Vritannis, which is under the control of the Holy See. * Guts arrives at Godot's home where he is told by Erica that the blacksmith has died. * Griffith visits Rickert atop the Hill of Swords, leading to Guts' encounter with Griffith. An ensuing fight with Zodd destroys Godot's mine before Griffith orders Zodd to withdraw due to more pressing matters. The destruction of Godot's mine, Casca's sanctuary against bad spirits and demons, forces Guts to take Casca with him to protect her. * Puck advises Guts that they should travel to his home, Elfhelm, where Casca would be safe. When winter comes and after alienating Casca, Guts crosses paths with Farnese, Serpico and Isidro as he allows them to join him to better protect Casca. * Griffith reforms the Band of the Falcon with Zodd and various other Apostles that include Grunbeld, Locus, Rakshas, and Irvine as members. The group also gains human members like Sonia, a girl with telepathic powers, and a Midland noble named Mule Wolflame. * Schierke, sent to Midland by Flora, feels that Griffith is the reincarnation of a high-level spirit while sensing his true nature. 04 AD * Guts and his traveling companions come across Morgan and help him reach the home of Flora despite Schierke's attempts to drive them off. * Guts meets Flora, who crafts a protective talisman for Casca and him to conceal their presence from restless spirits. Flora then reveals the nature of the God Hand, Beherits, and the Astral World to Guts. * Schierke joins Guts' party to assist him in defending Enoch Village from a Troll infestation. Beforehand, Guts and his comrades are all given magical relics to help them in future encounters. * Farnese and Casca are kidnapped and taken by the trolls to their den within a dark layer of the astral plane known as Qliphoth. Casca and Farnese are rescued, but Guts finds himself facing Slan who attempts to force him to activate the Beherit on his person. Near death, Guts is saved by the Skull Knight who repels Slan. * Griffith orchestrates an assault on Kushan-occupied Wyndham to rescue Charlotte. He saves her with the help of Nosferatu Zodd. * Emperor Ganishka defends his castle from the reborn Band of the Falcon while Rakshas instills disillusionment in Silat, revealing the true nature of Ganishka as a rogue Apostle and the monstrous armies of Pishaca and Daka that he had created. * Griffith orders the execution of Flora, sending a platoon of Apostles led by Grunbeld and Zodd to assassinate the witch. * Near death after his battle with Grunbeld, Guts is outfitted with the Berserker Armor for the first time. * Flora transcends her existence and sacrifices herself to hold off Grunbeld so Schierke and her new friends can flee. * Guts learns from Skull Knight the dangers of the Berserker Armor. He is also told that the King of Elfhelm, Hanafubuku can restore Casca's mind, but gives Guts a word of caution if it is best to restore Casca's sanity. * Casca meets a mysterious youth on the shore before the group is attacked by the Kushan empire's possessed animals, part of an advance force under Daiba who Ganishka dispatched. * As the full moon increases the Berserker Armor's potency, Guts loses control and nearly kills his allies. * The group decide to make their way to Vritannis with Farnese intending to use her familial ties to get them a ship where she reunites with her brother Magnifico. * Daiba makes his move, attacking Vritannis with his armies of monsters while Ganishka projects himself in the city to declare war on the Holy See itself. * Guts' friends escape to Roderick's ship, the Seahorse while Guts uses the Berserker Armor to combat the monsters. * Guts forms an unlikely truce with Zodd to defeat Ganishka. Griffith meanwhile, convinces Ganishka to settle things in Wyndham. * At Wyndham, Ganishka enters the Man-Made Beherit and sacrifices all his forces to transcend into a being equal to the God Hand despite Daiba's protest. * Ganishka destroys the city of Wyndham. * Griffith reaches Ganishka and kills the rogue Apostle, causing a Blast of the Astral World and the creation of his kingdom: Falconia. * Guts and his party embark on the sea-bound journey to Elfhelm. 05 AD * After the Blast of the Astral World, the layers separating the Natural plane from the Astral World dissolve; leading to a new world where humans and magical creatures co-exist. * Guts slays the Sea God with the help of Schierke, allowing safe passage to continue their journey. * Rickert and Erica travel to Falconia, now a haven from the horrors of the world. Reuniting with Griffith, Rickert strikes his former leader before fleeing the city with Erica, Silat and Daiba. * Guts and company finally end their long voyage, docking at Skellig. * Guts and his party are led to Elfhelm by a band of witches. One of the witches named Danaan reveals herself to be Sovereign Hanafubuku in disguise. * Hanafubuku confirms to Guts that she can heal Casca's mind and sanity. Instructing Farnese and Schierke to aid her, the trio enter the Corridor of Dreams to begin the healing process. References Appendices Category:Berserk World Category:Concepts